Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The Whittlesea Leader had an article this morning ("Bundoora Vegan Hits the Mark") about an upcoming World Vegan Day event in Melbourne and interviewed one of its organizers, Mark Reece. One particular snippet with Reece reminded me of why it is that I get a little apprehensive when the significance of the dietary aspect of veganism (such as in this article) is stressed, more so than on all of the possible ways in which vegans refuse to exploit nonhuman animals (e.g. not wearing clothing made of animal body parts, avoiding personal hygiene products that contain animal products, etc.). In the article, Reece explained veganism by stating that it is "a plant-based diet excluding animal products, with some vegans also choosing not to wear animal products such as leather and wool".

To a vegan, there is no difference between either eating part of a nonhuman animal or wearing part of a nonhuman animal. In both cases, the animal has been treated like a thing and exploited. In both cases, the nonhuman animal has been enslaved, made to suffer and slaughtered.

No problems. We won't be attempting to get the article corrected at this late stage, I barely have time to scratch myself let alone do anything like that. 3 days out and we are all hands on deck working around the clock (some of us sneakily at our paid jobs) to get the festival happening. If I'd known about it earlier then I would have, I'll see if I can give the website updater a call to put a message up about it on the wvd website.